brickclubfandomcom-20200213-history
1.7.4-Sarah1281
Brick!Club 1.7.4 Forms assumed by Suffering during Sleep Valjean had apparently been pacing and driving his poor downstairs neighbor crazy for five hours when he finally gave up and sat down. Okay, so apparently this is such an interesting dream he remembered it and later wrote it down and somehow ‘bequeathed it’ to the author? He probably left it to Cosette or something along with everything else and the author got it that way. The littlest things Hugo keeps insisting are super important and we must know all about them and the dream is one of those events. How precious that it is labeled “The Dream I had that Night.” It’s like an elementary school student with a writing assignment! Okay, here is the great mystery of this chapter: "I was walking with my brother, the brother of my childish years, the brother of whom, I must say, I never think, and whom I now hardly remember.” He has a brother? Since when does he have a brother? When I first read this I thought that remembered that the brother had left home at an early age to go find work and never came back but I have since not seen any trace of that so maybe I was imagining it, thinking of fanfic, or conflating texts. Is it his real brother? Why is this the first we’ve heard of it? He obviously wasn’t around when Valjean was arrested and his sister (and kids) were his only family. I’ve heard two possible explanations for this: either it’s not literally his brother and just a close friend (but he doesn’t seem to have ever had any of those since that wouldn’t be tragic enough) or his brother died. He wasn’t mentioned as having died earlier on in the back story but the parents dying was only mentioned to add to the wretchedness of the situation and why his sister raised him and he was returning the favor with her kids. It still would have added to the sadness of Valjean’s life but wouldn’t have changed it all that much except if the brother had lived to help out financially. The brother died thing honestly hadn’t occurred to me until someone mentioned it and it really should have. He doesn’t think of his possibly dead brother but he doesn’t think of his possibly dead sister and her children, either. Seeing him in the dream must have been quite a surprise. His brother must have been a great deal younger than him in the dream since he wouldn’t have seen him since he was fairly young no matter who he was. He was younger, too, I suppose. He was cold in the dream because he never shut the window and was incorporating external stimuli. He met a strange-looking man and then his brother abruptly vanished and he was in Romainville. Valjean might not know why he was there but I think I do. The chapter before when his mind is drifting he thinks of a clock he saw in a store the other day that had the name ‘Antoine-Albin de Romainville’ on it and then the name Romainville keeps sticking in his mind and he associates it with thing song he heard about it being a little grove near Paris where young lovers go to pick lilacs in April. I wonder if Fantine and Tholomyes ever did that. Then he goes to a house, sees a guy, asks whose house it was. He does the same thing with a garden. He does not get an answer. I don’t know, maybe he feels isolated and on his own? And his decision changes everything for so many people so he feels the weight and judgment of everyone watching him? He sees a crowd of people he saw before in the dream and they have ‘strange heads’ that are not elaborated on. Someone tells him he’s dead and doesn’t he know that? Well, he did say a part of him was dying. Maybe Jean Valjean was dead by still lingering. I can’t figure out the rest of the dream, though. I’m no good at dream analysis and so I leave that to others. When did he light the candle again? Still no stars. Those stars are terribly unreliable. Javert really should have picked better sentinels. I’m reminded of that anonymous comment I once read where he chooses something else instead: “Clouds In your multitudes Filling the darkness With squiggly shapes You’re terrible sentinels Always blowing away.” Valjean is spending all this time trying to figure out what to do that he forgot about the carriage coming that will allow him to actually make a choice and not be forced to remain by default. Of course, the coach is late. He wanted it by four-thirty. Not only has he forgotten about the coach but when he is reminded he still blocks it out for awhile. He’s overwhelmed again and starts playing with wax. It’s the moment of destiny and he does not send the coach away. Commentary Doeskin-pantaloons A few people have commented on the brother thing, so here is my theory: Firstly, that Hugo is an unreliable narrator, so the fact that he never mentioned the brother until now definitely does not mean there isn’t a brother. It’s just that - as with what someone mentioned yesterday about how we aren’t told Madeleine is Valjean until now because Madeleine really doesn’t want to think of himself as Valjean - we aren’t told about the brother because he was: the brother of my childish years, the brother of whom, I must say, I never think, and whom I now hardly remember. Valjean doesn’t appear to see him as even currently being his brother, but more as some dude who was once his brother, during his ‘childish years’ but who is no longer relevant to his life. I figure that Hugo’s way of depicting families like this is a comment that he’s making about what society does to this people: Valjean loses his family, and basically forgets about the existance of his brother, his sister, and the children. And then Fantine obviously loses Cosette, and Cosette seems to hardly remember her mother. And the Thenardiers are hardly filled with familial love and warmth. So the separation of family - and the lack of connection with his brother - is one of Hugo’s ways of showing us just how much society has fucked these people over.